Unicorp must first close on $20 million purchase of City Center on West Big Beaver

The City Center office building in Troy sits on nearly 13 acres of land.

The Golden Corridor landscape in Troy could dramatically change if a Florida developer gets its hands on a key – but struggling – office property at Big Beaver Road and I-75.

A $130 million project is planned to renovate the 297,530-square-foot City Center office building and construct 200 new high-end apartments on land surrounding the building, according to Chuck Whittall, president of Unicorp National Developments Inc., the Orlando-based developer who has the City Center building under contract.

“Like a W Hotel, but residential,” Whittall said Friday morning when he was characterizing the planned apartment project.

The City Center building, which Unicorp has under contract after being the $20 million high bidder in an online auction earlier this week, is about 41 percent occupied.

Current tenants such as the Morton’s steakhouse and The Melting Pot restaurants have leases that will be honored, Whittall said.

Also included in the project is the planned demolition of an approximately 300-space parking garage on the site and replacing it with a new parking deck and surface parking lots totaling 1,300 to 1,400 spaces, Whittall said.

The site is not being used to its best potential at this time, Whittall said.

“We are going to create several restaurant out-parcels, make it kind of urban, more pedestrian friendly along the road, more apartments and really create more development there,” he said.

Matt Farrell, principal, board member and partner of Bingham Farms-based Core Partners LLC, who has worked on Troy real estate deals for over a decade, called Unicorp's plan a "phenomenal project and vision."

"A development of this magnitude is well-deserved and desired by the community at large," he said.

If the City Center purchase closes early next month as expected, it would be the second Troy office purchase for Unicorp in the last two months.

In December, it paid $4.05 million for the 45,000-square-foot CATS Co. building at 2100 W. Big Beaver Road, according to CoStar Group Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based real estate information service.

A city of Troy Planning Department employee said a preliminary site plan approval application for a new Eddie V’s seafood restaurant has been filed for the CATS Co. building.

Whittall said that after the planned sale closing in March, it would take about a year for planning and permitting to be completed. The goal is to break ground on the project in the spring 2017 with construction complete 12-14 months after that, he said.

“We’ve been doing our homework on this thing (the City Center building) for quite some time,” he said. “We made an offer on the building last year. But we are starting to talk to contractors and we are full go right now.”

According to its website, Unicorp has real estate holdings and developments in Eastpointe, Florida, New York, Arizona, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, Mississippi and elsewhere.